How to Use a Shock Collar Correctly

by Fun Paw Carehttp://www.funpawcare.com/2012/11/09/how-to-use-a-shock-collar-correctly/

Considering using a shock collar?But at what expense?• Stress to your dog and quite possibly your dog’s life!1

Stress is as debilitating for dogs as it is for humans.2 

As dog trainers we constantly clean up and repair broken relationships, poor behavior and shoddy training advice given by uneducated, abusive, and outdated “traditional” dog trainers.

What does it mean to be a pet parent?

These are all violated and dissolved when someone forces you to do something, incites fear, and puts you in pain

• Friendship

• Trust

• Love

Someone with great power does not lead by force, someone with great weakness does.

“Force always attracts men of low morality.”

-Albert Einstein

Friendships and relationships are about empowering one another, not disempowering someone

• Disempowering someone is abuse

Bullying is the antithesis of sacred relationships and weakens the bond you share with your pets.

• When was the last time you got bullied into being someone’s friend? Did you want to be around that person?

It is illegal to use and sell pain inflicting devices such as shock

collars3

• There is never an instance where teaching through pain and force is warranted• Pain, force, intimidation, and bullying leads to shutting down, learned

helplessness, and generalization4

• Instead, use positive reinforcement techniques:

• Rewards• Engagement• Fun• Interest

Does it matter which method works better?

• Let’s play devil’s advocate for a moment and just pretend that outdated, traditional dog “training” worked the same or even better then force-free positive reinforcement dog training.16

• Of course that is patently false and has been repudiated by decades of scientific and behavioral research but for argument’s sake let’s entertain this notion.5 

• The real question becomes at what expense are you willing to achieve “results” from your dog?

At what expense are you willing to achieve “results” from your dog?

Stress Manifestations on a Dogs Health and Behavior

• We can all agree that stress is a killer!6-7

• Stress causes or contributes to everything from high blood pressure, hair loss, depression, neurological damage, psychological damage, cancer, heart attacks, and just about every life threatening disease known to human kind.

• Luckily, stress can be measured.

How to measure stress:• Cortisol is the hormone that increases when stress levels

increase in the body and the limbic system helps regulate and measure that level of stress.

• Your adrenal gland secretes cortisol and sends it spiking

higher when the body or mind is stressed out.

• When this occurs all of the previous mentioned health ailments and countless behavior manifestations occur.

• Now, let’s take this a step further. At the risk of being anthropomorphic, dogs have roughly the same sentience of a 2-3 year old child.18

• When humans use shock collars, choke chains and/or pinch collars on their dogs or kick, poke, punch, alpha role, force, dominate, smack or yell at their dog, science shows that cortisol levels spike and stress ensues.9

• The negative consequences induced by stress are all avoidable.9

“Nothing made by brute force lasts” -Robert Louis Stevenson

The dangers of electronic collars, punitive, painful, and forceful dog training methods:

• Punishment makes the conditioned fear response (CFR) worse and other behavioral problems manifest often times with graver consequences and more intense occurrences.

• Punishment does not work to heal nor addresses the underlying fear and emotion the dog is going through and only throws the homeostasis more out of whack. • There is a direct correlation and relationship

between punishment, shock collars, choke chains and prong collars to increased behavior problems.10

• There are innumerable dangers that result from using punitive, painful and forceful dog training methods. Some of these methods can lead to death of another human or dog.11-12 

Fear feels bad to all species and given the choice dogs, like humans, try to avoid these feelings.17

Dominance, choke chains, prong collars and other forceful training methods are worthless at best and deadly at worst as scientists explain,

“training approaches aimed at ‘dominance reduction’ vary from being worthless in treatment to being actually dangerous and likely to make behaviors worse.”13

Dog & Human AnalogiesIf you are trying to teach a toddler or even an adult how to behave or learn a new skill, would you kick them in the ribs, use a choke chain, dominate them, stare at them, pop their harness, or grab them by the collar and force them to the ground?

If you said yes to this question, you are likely

reading this from prison.

There is a reason this crude, uncivilized, abusive style of dog “training” or teaching is not accepted in civilized societies and why we also do not teach our children or adults to teach or behave in this fashion.

As a result, these methods are condemned and not sanctioned by any educated, moral ethologist or dog trainer.

What is encouraged is the preferred method and industry standard for teaching animals: force-free positive reinforcement, and the least intrusive, most humane treatment of teaching possible.

If you have gone to the dentist, visited a doctor, taken any over the counter medicine, then you believe in science.• Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is also a science, just as

the field of medicine.• Your innocent, loving, loyal, sentient being, and best

friend deserves nothing but the best. Just as your children are taught by the least intrusive, least abusive, most pleasurable way of learning possible, so should your pets.

We do not support and recommend that others boycott organizations that save dogs just to subject

them to abuse while hiding under a veil of ignorance. 

Here are some more analogies for the skeptical:

• Do you smack your 2-3 year old toddler in the head or squirt them in the face with a water bottle when they are scared or are not listening to you?

• If your toddler was deathly afraid of water and couldn’t swim, would you get them to stop being scarred, crying, shaking and protesting and teach them to love the water by picking them up and throwing them in the ocean?

• If your 2- 3 year old daughter was scared of the dark and even more terrified of bats, would leaving her alone in a cave with bats flying everywhere cure her of this fear?

• Do you expect your toddler to understand French, Spanish, English, Mandarin, Cantonese or Swahili and all of the accents and dialects? Would that be a reasonable expectation for a parent before attempting to teach a child linguistics?

• If your toddler didn’t understand the answer to your question or answers incorrectly, would holding them down on the ground forcefully, looming over them starring into their eyes confrontationally, being aggressive, poking, punching or yelling at them make them understand any quicker?

(If you say yes to any of these questions, do not pass GO and proceed directly to jail!)

• All of those scenarios are proven to cause cortisol levels to spike to very high levels. Levels at which shut down occurs and where operant conditioning (learning) cannot occur! • If someone pulled out a shotgun and held it to your head

and then tried to teach you a new theory or behavior how do you think you would react or perform? (before or after you wet your pants).• As previously mentioned, stress is bad for the mind, body

and soul and something we have the ability to mitigate.

“Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where force begins.”

- Ayn Rand

The answer is clear!

I would NOT abuse my dog for any reason! • As responsible pet parents it is imperative to teach at a

dog’s own pace and in as much comfort as possible, not on your time or to win a dog sport competition.

• It’s not about what dog training method is most effective or achieves the quickest results

• Even science shows that force-free

positive reinforcement achieves the fastest, long term results in the most humane, effective and efficient way possible.

• Scientists try to be as objective and unanthropomorphic as possible but making these analogies to your children portrays an important and visual understanding that makes everything more relatable.

• No rational, caring, intelligent, loving, humane, veterinarian or rescue organization would ever recommend doing the aforementioned to a human and may even be locked up for abuse if they tried, so why is this acceptable to do to an innocent dog or cat (or any animal)?

• Pet professionals and dog guardians should take an oath to care for their pet until death, in the most humane, efficient, pain and stress free way possible. 

Being a guardian for a pet is a privilege, not a right or

entitlement.

There really is no argument to use anything other than force-free positive reinforcement dog training and the debate has been over for decades. Those stuck in the past are doomed to repeat past atrocities.

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards”

- Søren Kierkegaard

“Absolutely, without exception, I oppose, will not recommend, and generally spend large amounts of time telling people why I oppose the use of shock collars, prong collars, choke collars, and any other type of device that is rooted in an adversarial, confrontational interaction with the dog.”

- Karen Overall, MA, VMD, PhD, Dipl. ACVB, CAAB

“Until these devices are illegal, consumers must protect themselves and their dogs by looking beyond the marketing messages of those who profit from their sale and use. It is not necessary to use electric shock to change

behavior. It is not necessary in humans, in zoo species, in marine mammals or in dogs.”

- Jean Donaldson

1. http://www.journalvetbehavior.com/article/S1558-7878(13)00004-X/abstract2. http://www.journalvetbehavior.com/article/S1558-7878(14)00007-0/abstract?elsca1=etoc&elsca2=email&elsca3=1558-7878_201403_9_2&elsca4=elsevier3. http://wales.gov.uk/docs/drah/publications/090325kcpaper1en.pdf4. http://www.journalvetbehavior.com/article/S1558-7878%2813%2900121-4/abstract5. http://www.appliedanimalbehaviour.com/article/S0168-1591(11)00087-6/abstract6. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12160-012-9423-07. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NpFEn2_cqrk#!8. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071009164122.htm9. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201205/is-punishment-effective-way-change-the-behavior-dogs10. http://www.journalvetbehavior.com/article/S1558-7878(07)00276-6/abstract11. http://www.appliedanimalbehaviour.com/article/S0168-1591(13)00292-X/abstract12. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201403/dog-aggression-is-predicted-training-methods-and-breed?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CanineCornerCS+%28Canine+Corner%2913. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090521112711.htm14. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201307/do-dogs-learn-faster-food-other-types-rewards15. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016815911100087616. http://www.livescience.com/40453-dogs-follow-friends-not-alphas.html17. http://books.wwnorton.com/books/978-0-393-70531-7/18. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/dogs-are-people-too.html?single=1&_r=1&